Pin: rook to e3
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1648 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A pin freezes a piece in front of a more valuable one behind it. Scan the ranks, files and diagonals your bishop, rook or queen controls: if an enemy piece cannot move without exposing its king or queen, it is pinned and can be piled on or bypassed.
General method: before you move, list the forcing candidates — every check, every capture, every direct threat — and calculate those first. The solution to a tactic is almost always among them.
Position on the board
White: king g3, queen f3, pawn a2 b2 g2 h4 d5.
Black: king g8, rook e6, bishop b6, pawn c4 c6 a7 g7 h7.
7 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 29.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (14 against 13; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g3, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 29, with 29 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b, d.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
29... Re3 30. Qxe3 Bxe3
Why it works
- Great move! rook to e3 keeps the pressure (+4.5).
- Well found: bishop to e3 (+4.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxe3, then Bxe3 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 29… Re3 — rook to e3
- 30. Qxe3 — queen to e3 (capture)
- Bxe3 — bishop to e3 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Only move
Everything else loses — find the only move that holds.
An only move is a position where everything loses except one single continuation. You cannot play "by hand" here: run through fundamentally different defenses — run away, block, trade, counterattack — and discard the ones that fail. The hallmark of these puzzles is that the obvious moves lose quickly while the solution often looks strange. First understand exactly what the threat is — then the one saving move reveals itself.
Queen endgame
Queens on an open board — precision above all.
Queen endgames are treacherous: the queen reaches everywhere, and one slip turns a win into perpetual check. The signs are few pawns, exposed kings, and checks hanging in the air. Tuck your king away early, and use your own checks to bring the queen closer or push your passer with tempo. The typical mistake is grabbing pawns while leaving your king exposed to endless checks.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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